Highland Rim Capital

Highland Rim Capital pursues a broad lower-middle-market strategy that includes management buyouts, corporate divestitures, recapitalizations, and growth equity, alongside select early-stage and seed investments. The firm targets founder-owned and family-run businesses, typically with $2 million to $10 million in EBITDA, undergoing ownership transitions. Its approach is operationally focused, with principals working closely alongside management teams post-close to drive value creation.

The firm concentrates on the US Southeast and Midwest, with a particular emphasis on secondary and tertiary markets. Its headquarters in Brentwood, Tennessee, places it centrally within the Nashville metropolitan area, providing proximity to a large number of potential portfolio companies in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, and the broader region. The firm's name itself is a geographic marker, referencing the Highland Rim that encircles the Nashville Basin.

Highland Rim Capital invests across the capital structure, taking both control and minority positions depending on the specific transaction and the needs of the selling shareholders or management team. Control buyouts and majority recapitalizations are central to the strategy, but the firm has also executed growth equity and minority investments when the structure aligns with its operational involvement model.

The firm primarily targets founder-owned and family-run businesses where the owners are seeking a liquidity event or succession solution. Highland Rim Capital also evaluates corporate carve-outs and non-core divestitures from larger entities. Its broad mandate—which includes management buyouts—positions it to serve as a buyer for retiring founders who want their legacy preserved and their management teams retained.

The firm's breadth of mandate is unusual for its scale: it invests from seed-stage venture through later-stage buyouts and recapitalizations. Most lower-middle-market peers specialize in either control transactions or early-stage investing, but Highland Rim operates across both. This creates a sourcing model where seed and growth relationships can evolve into control transactions over time, particularly as founders in the region age toward succession events.